


stay

by eichart



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M, Soft Hockey Boys, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, maybe... if you want it to be :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 17:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eichart/pseuds/eichart
Summary: Ras doesn’t remember much from those first days on the ice. They mangle together into a blur of skewed memory, but he remembers this: the smoothness of the ice, the way Victor’s eyes had widened when he poked the puck between his feet, and the peace that’d briefly settled between his bones. There’d been a flicker of a smile between them and warmth blooming in his chest.If they really had a beginning, that’s good enough as any.
Relationships: Rasmus Dahlin & Victor Olofsson, Rasmus Dahlin/Victor Olofsson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	stay

**Author's Note:**

> Why only pioneer one tag when you can pioneer two, amirite? Thanks for giving this a chance. I hope you enjoy it! If you personally know any of the names listed above, please click away and save us all from the embarrassment.
> 
> An [optional playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2IHFpOlxP9f3u59gtmwZM9) to listen to if you're interested. Header lyrics are from Marc Scibilia's ["You Are the Night"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EJrRVOyC_E).

_ You are the feeling I can’t explain, _ _   
_ _ Beautiful. _

* * *

Ras is sixteen when he’s promoted, bouncing up Frölunda’s hockey ranks in the matter of weeks like a piece of dandelion fluff just trying to find a place to land: junior, u20, finally settling on the men’s team where his talent says he belongs but his age suggests otherwise.

The whispers follow him wherever he goes: a prodigy, a phenom, a generational talent ---- but if anyone bothered to ask, he’d call himself a hockey player.

On the ice Ras knows where he fits like the instinct to breathe, but off it he feels out of his depth. However displaced he felt on the junior teams is magnified tenfold here where the age gap starts at five years minimum. He mostly keeps to himself in the locker room, silently observing and absorbing the years of knowledge swimming around him.

Victor Olofsson is also new to the team this season, though not new to the SHL. His reputation precedes him the same way they predict warm summer nights in June: the boy from the relegated Modo franchise who just wanted to win so badly. He’s quiet too, at first --mostly sticking with Carl also from Modo who signed with him-- but Ras can see it; the way those blue eyes also seem to take everything in with careful calculation. He can relate to that and feels a little less like he glaringly sticks out with Victor around.

He knows what lies between them --experience, years, time-- but still, he can’t help but find his presence comforting. It happens gradually, but slowly and surely Ras finds himself caught in some gravity around him.

He doesn’t remember much from those first days on the ice. They mangle together into a blur of skewed memory, but he remembers this: the smoothness of the ice, the way Victor’s eyes had widened when he poked the puck between his feet, and the peace that’d briefly settled between his bones. There’d been a flicker of a smile between them and warmth blooming in his chest.

If they really had a beginning, that’s good enough as any.

—

Victor shoots the puck like he was born to do it.

Maybe he was. 

The first time he sees it, it takes Ras’ breath away (and the second and the third and the fourth… ). A year and change later, it’ll become the source of humor in interviews, how he’s not surprised to see it, that he’s just seen it so many times it’s not impressive anymore. They’ll all be lies.

They get put on the powerplay together: Ras at the point with the brains behind the puck, and Victor in his favorite spot at the top of the right circle. They talk about chemistry between linemates, between defensive pairs, but seldom do they consider that between a defenseman and forward. Ras thinks they might be wrong not to, because there’s something when he passes and Victor shoots: something clicking perfectly into place.

—

He misses home so much it hurts, some days.

He was fifteen when he first left home. Back then, he thought he was old enough to understand that: the people you leave behind, the sacrifices it takes to chase your dreams, never having any assurance you’ll ever get what you want. But he wasn’t, not really, and won’t be for quite some time.

That year he learned what it’s like to be truly alone.

Autonomy is something desired by kids too young to understand how much it takes to live on your own in society. The grocery shopping, the phone bills and bank accounts. It hurts a little less than it had last year; maybe he’s just more used to it. At least last year, he had his roommates to ease the sting, but even that didn’t fully fill that gaping hole of loneliness that swelled up inside him. In this locker room, with the divide as severe as it is, it’s even easier to get lost.

His mother tells him more than one place can be  _ home _ , and Ras can’t see how that can be.

At least not yet.

—

Victor doesn’t celly after his goals very often. It takes Ras a while to figure out the reason why: a few weeks of observation and late night Google searches he’ll never admit to making. He pieces it together eventually, though: Modo on the wrong side of a comeback in Leksand to relegate them out of the SHL. Victor had two goals to his name and not enough in the end.

The fact saddens him: talent should be appreciated no matter what. Ras has already spent too much of his life being called  _ special _ to not see in others and he knows, without a doubt that Victor Olofsson is special. This fact has absolutely nothing to do with the way he makes him feel: calm, hopeful, the promise of a midsummer’s day.

Ras starts finding him at the end of every period after that, as if he can pass off the pride welling in his rib cage in fist bumps and a lingering hand on his chest.

—

In December, the sun sets at 3 pm. It’s Ras’ least favorite time of the year, despite it being the height of hockey season.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that the timing works like this, because at least he can focus on hockey and not the ever lingering darkness that presses around them. The worst days, though, are the ones when he enters the rink in twilight and exits it to a similarly dark sky.

He avoids his own reflection in the mirror; he knows what he looks like, all pale skin and dark circles beneath hollowed eyes. He knows that they think; that it’s finally getting to him, all the playing up into the men’s league; he’s finally out of his depth --- but it’s not that. His play does not suffer; he makes sure of that.

It’s just--

It’s like no matter how much he sleeps his body can’t seem to recharge, not without the sun shining outside and green foliage opening up to the sky.

—

He’s lived in Sweden his whole life, and lived on his own for over a year now. He thinks he knows how to handle his less than ideal winter tendencies; after all, he’s only been doing this his whole life.

There’s a grow lamp in his bedroom that gives off soft imitation daylight. Most dark evenings he spends bathed in its glow, staving off the way darkness presses around him, cold and sapping. But more than anything, it’s lonely. He hadn’t been prepared for that: the quietness of his apartment, how still the air is, how quickly darkness could become synonymous with isolation.

His plants only hold the barest modicum of comfort --- merely symbols, the faintest connection to family.

They’re a poor substitute.

—

He craves human interaction, staying late at the rink after practice to pound one timers into the net or practice edgework in complicated figure eights. Most days, there’s someone there with him: Joel Lundqvist their captain with plenty of advice and knowledge to give, a d-man to practice behind the net plays with, a forward to perfect a breakout pass. 

Sometimes, it’s Victor. 

When it’s a particularly bad day, it’s always Victor, actually.

In these hours, they perfect the cross-crease passes to Victor in his office at the top of the right circle, the chemistry between them inevitably follows. There’s not much talk in those after-practice hours, but Ras doesn’t need him to. There’s a certain peace that comes with the rhythmic sounds of skates on ice, a certain sense of belonging that seeps in between his bones and begins to fill that dark place winter carves out.

There are habits born out of this: Ras finding Victor on the ice no matter where he is, handshakes before every period, and ‘  _ Lycka till _ ’ ( good luck ) on his lips and a smile on Victor’s.

It’s in this time that Victor laughs and despite the layers of darkness outside the arena, Ras feels like he can see the sun. It doesn’t dawn on him until later that this might be the happiest he’s ever been in winter for a long time.

—

That season they lose in semi-finals.

Ras goes home and leaves another piece of it behind.

—

It’s harder to miss home when he finally is home, surrounded by family in the slow moving summer months. He gets back into the routine he established when he was still a kid ( though plenty would argue he  _ is _ still a kid ): morning runs in the quarry behind his house, sand giving way beneath his shoes and the sun beating down in refreshing torrents, jumping into the lake to cool off in the afternoons.

It’s syrupy and familiar in the way summers are, little packets of memory cracked open again, full of time to recharge for the season ahead. 

But Ras misses Victor a little though. He won’t lie about that.

—

The season starts suddenly, memories of quarry sand dunes and the hot sun fading quickly. Ras returns to Gothenburg a few pounds heavier; Victor returns with a sharper cut to his chin and the strong sweep of cheekbones beneath piercing eyes all the more prominent.

Ras’ gaze lingers without him realizing it.

—

The first time he saw Victor, he hadn’t been impressed. Victor had looked at him with something like awe, but then again, almost everyone had: it came with being a sixteen year old in the men’s league.

Now, most still look at him like there’s gold in his hair, but Victor sees him as a hockey player ( as a teammate, as a friend, as a…? )

When he calls him  _ special,  _ Ras’ heart flutters in his chest.

—

Victor is beautiful.

He comes to that conclusion far too slowly, in bits and pieces unlike the hockey plays that flash through his mind seamlessly. He hadn’t noticed that last season, but maybe he hadn’t been comfortable enough to.

It’s the cut of his jaw in the shadows of the dressing room, the way his eyes look so blue under the arena lights, the lines of his hands pressing tape onto the toe of his stick. Victor has this tendency to smile, small and lopsided and quirky, in interviews and at dinner with teammates when jokes and laughter are given freely. He smiles in full, sometimes, when he scores, those bright blue eyes fixed only on Ras. He memorizes that curve without realizing it, wonders what it would feel like against his lips, his throat.

_ Dreaming  _ isn’t what Ras does ( that’s the special talent of a dark-haired Minnesota boy he hasn’t met yet ) but there are nights when they’re vivid enough they seem to stick to his skin when he wakes up, unsure of the line between memory and fantasy. They’re all tinted in blues and golds, of the deep red of Modo’s jersey and featherlight touches that leave him gasping for breath.

—

This new development makes things increasingly complicated.

—

Sweat sticks Victor’s curls to the back of his neck, his eyes wider than usual as he pants for breath. They somehow manage to look bluer against the bright ice and that makes something twist inside him, incongruent with the calmness he’s come to associate with Victor.

Ras looks until he realizes he’s staring and then looks away.

He badly fumbles an easy pass on the next drill that earns him a sharp reprimandation from one of the assistant coaches. Victor gives him a comraderic tap across the shin pads as they take a water break, but the motion does little to dislodge the Victor-related cobwebs in his mind, as does Victor removing his helmet to drag fingers through his hair.

Ras groans in frustration to himself and turns away, a little more aggressively than necessary. He does his best to ignore Victor for the rest of practice and for the rest of the week.

It goes very poorly.

—

“Are you alright?”

Ras keeps his gaze steadily on his skates, methodically tightening the laces from toe to heel, but he’s pulling too hard -- he knows he’ll have to retie them, but right now he continues the fruitless task because all he wants is for Victor to leave.

(That’s not what he wants -- not really). 

He can feel the way Victor radiates from where he’s sitting in his stall, and it’s everything he can do it keep his fingers tangled in skate laces and not tangling with Victor’s hair.

Instead he fills his mind with calming things:  _ sunshine, summer, hot sand, the way Victor--- _ fuck.

“Stop it,” he growls out, more to the unwanted thoughts in his head than anything, but he still sees Victor flinch before he walks away.

That only makes him feel even worse.

—

Ras knows he has to figure this out, not just because it’s starting to affect his game, because this is his draft season and expectations are already breaking high, but because he misses Victor too.

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to get over someone you  _ like _ .

He tries very hard, though. If he packs these things into boxes, maybe he can put this behind them. And so he deletes the photos on his phone he’ll never admit to saving, takes those red colored thoughts about Victor and shoves them into some dusty corner of his mind relegated to his bedroom and his shower.

It works well enough, though Ras feels like his face is constantly too hot and his heart rate is too high when he’s around Victor.

He makes it work; he’s faced  _ tougher _ \--- this just might be the first time he’s avoided something that made him feel  _ good _ .

—

Ras doesn’t let himself go very often --- he’s an observer in this locker room and nights out, if he attends at all, usually consist of copious amounts of soda. But with the first month and change of the season behind him and the unexpected everything with Victor that got shoved into his face and feelings without preamble, Ras feels jittery, a little too constrained, like he’s gripping his stick too tightly  _ always _ . So he goes out after a defiant win to celebrate both the W and a birthday of one of the forwards.

The night slips through his fingers like the beer through his lips, the scene around him dissolving into a series of disconnected senses: the beat through the soles of his shoes, the bitter taste of hops in his tongue, sweat sticking the back of his shirt to his skin, the line of Victor’s throat in flickering light.

He must stumble into him much later; Ras only knows because there’s a sense of calmness sinking down through him with the steadying arm that wraps around his shoulder. And in this moment, Ras feels only that, blissed out and warm like he does on the best summer days. 

He twists, looks down at Victor as best he can in the darkness. A wash of complicated emotion cuts through the wave of calm: fondness, yearning,  _ something. _ “I miss you,” he tells him. “I miss you and I wish you’d, you’d---”  _ Come home with me, _ he wants to say, but he would never be so bold.

There are so, so many reasons not to.

“Let me take you home,” says Victor instead. The tone is wrong though, a little sad, mostly fond in the way his brother sounds and not in the way Ras wants. But before Ras  _ wanted  _ anything, he wanted how Victor made him feel: like everything is going to be okay, that the only promise bad days bring is that they’ll end. 

_ Fuck _ , he misses that; he didn’t realize how much he missed that until now, wrapped up so solidly in it.

Ras lists into his side, languid and calm. Victor doesn’t protest, just wraps an arm around his waist and guides him down the stairs onto the sidewalk. The night wraps cool air around them, and Ras clings tighter to Victor as a breeze brings a chill that slips right through his sweatshirt.

Victor doesn’t let go, and through the haze of his mind, Ras is eternally thankful for that.

—

The bed he drops down into feels soft under his body. He’s vaguely aware of Victor undoing the knots in his shoes, much more aware of the feeling pulsing through his veins with every  _ thud _ of his heart. 

_ What would he do without him? _ The thought’s unexpected, muttered almost incoherently though Ras doesn’t realize it.

He hears the floor creak as Victor turns to go, however, and overwhelmed with the urge to make him  _ stay  _ Ras reaches out for his hand. “Vic—“ He feels light-headed, a little dizzy like he’s slowly falling toward the ground, like this might be the most important thing he can say. “Vic, I---”

Victor reappears in the blur of his vision, fingers briefly wrapping back around Ras’. “Good night, Ras,” he says firmly. His eyes look very blue in the bedroom light. Ras wonders if he’s hallucinating the fondness he sees there, if maybe everything he ever feels around Victor is just one great hallucination. There’s a blanket dropped over him, warm and soft, one last lingering touch on one of his hands, and as Ras closes his eyes he decides it doesn’t matter.

“I love you,” he mumbles, but the room is empty.

Only the faintest wisps of calm curling around his hands betraying Victor was ever there are all.

—

Ras wakes up the next day, head pounding and warmth curling around him. It’s not just from the comforter tucked around him though, there’s an ease in his limbs, a sense of peace dulling the pain drilling into his temples. That only means one thing: that Victor is close by.

He rolls over and cracks open his eyes. There’s a couple pills and a glass of water on the nightstand, and behind those a photo of Victor and what must be his brother in some cobbled street. The conclusion to reach is pretty straight forward, especially when the sheets smell like Victor and seem to faintly emit the same calming influences. But the headache is too much for him to really process anything, so he shuts his eyes again, blindly downing the Advil and water only dribbling a little down his front. 

The night before is a bit of a blur, faint memories flickering bright and dying as quickly as they appear. All he really remembers is Victor, leaning into his frame, the faint traces of want licking at his stomach, falling asleep alone.

Ras is not sure how long he lies there, one hand idly playing with the edge of the comforter, but eventually he knows he can’t lie here forever, no matter how much he wants to.

Victor is in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee at the counter, a Modo snapback resting backwards on his head. His gaze meets Ras’ as he enters, that smile lighting up his face, and ease washes through Ras, relieving the tension he hadn't even realized he’d been holding.

“Morning.”

\--

It goes like this:

_ “Good luck,” _ on Ras’ lips before every game, a glimmer in his eyes; the answer in Victor’s smile.

It goes like this:

“I’m so glad you’re here,” in the good moments, the bad moments, the lonely, dark, and isolating.

“Always, Ras,” says Victor, and even though he knows better, Ras believes him.

—

The World Juniors are in Buffalo this year.

Casey Mittelstadt gets drunk in a club mixed with Team USA and Team Sweden that they’re not supposed to be in and slurs out to anyone who will listen that he loves this city. It’s only December still. Six months to the lottery, four-plus months of hockey, but draft talk is steadily picking up. 

_ Buffalo _ is flirting with the bottom of the standings already.

And  _ Buffalo _ is Victor’s future team --- Ras thinks he could love it too.

—

They win silver at World Juniors, but they’re not so young that it doesn’t sound more like losing gold. Lias Andersson gets slaughtered in the media for what he does with his medal; Ras gets incredibly jetlagged and somehow ends up at Victor’s apartment instead of his own.

He doesn’t realize the tension held in every strand of muscle and pounded into his bones until Victor answers his door, hair sleep mused and that feeling of calm washing off him in waves. Ras has never been much of a crier, but he feels the urge to now, standing on Victor’s doorstep and the pressure of the draft building up far too rapidly.

It hasn’t sunk in, really. Not until now, all at once and it feels like too much.

“Ras?”

Victor’s voice jerks his gaze from where they’d been unfocused on the space before his feet. He feels raw, pent up emotion sparking through his stripped body like a live wire. There are a million things he could say, a million excuses and explanations, but none of them seem to come out.

“ _ Ras _ \---” Victor’s voice is definitely concerned now, and almost in tandem Ras feels a wave of calmness wash around him, slowing his heart rate. He sucks in a sharp breath, restraint leaving him as he caves in, stumbling over the doorstep and reaching out for Victor.

“It’s okay,” whispers Victor, and Ras clutches back, a trembling breath splayed against Victor’s neck. “You’re okay.”

He doesn’t know when this happened: when Victor became synonymous with comfort, with  _ home.  _ It doesn’t matter. Ras closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of being safe.

“I can’t do this.” The words get choked up in his throat, syllables mangled into a sob.

“Yes, you can.”

—

He wakes up the next morning curled into Victor’s chest. The sky outside still gray twilight as it is in these months until midday, but from the way he feels, it’s as if sunlight were streaming in between the blinds. Victor is still asleep, one hand splayed protectively across Ras’ back. Reluctantly, Ras slips from this cocoon of warmth, prepared to make a covert escape.

“You can stay,” mumbles Victor behind him. When Ras looks back, his eyes are still closed. “Carl makes a mean omelet.”

“I don’t---”

“Take whatever you need out of the dresser.” Victor shifts, one hand reaching out (perhaps unconsciously) to the warmth of the spot Ras abandoned and falls silent, presumably to sleep for another fifteen minutes.

Ras remains on the edge of the bed, hesitating. Eventually, his emotions win out over his head.

The seemingly inconspicuous Frolunda sweatshirt he steals has a little number eleven on the shoulder, something he notices only halfway to the rink. The chirping he gets in the dressing room is more than thorough, but any embarrassment he feels is quickly overridden by the comfort the fabric brings him, like that feeling Victor brings has been woven between the threads.

If Victor notices he never gives the sweatshirt back, he says nothing.

—

The season hurtles on far too quickly, all Ras can do is hold on to what he knows and control what he can. He does his draft interviews; he keeps playing his game; he finds Victor at the end of every period, when he asks him to stay, he does.

He knows where Victor’s apartment is and there are bad days when all he wants to do is stumble to its front door, pale and trembling, seeking out something familiar. There are good days too, when it feels like the sun on his back and he’s laying languid in his own bed. He finds his thoughts still drifting, though, aching to seek out that touch like plants reach for sunlight.

Victor smiles, in cellies when he makes a good pass to lead to a goal, in practice when the nickname ‘Vic’ slips out of Ras’s mouth instead of frowning when anyone else does. He doesn’t know what they are; not when he falls asleep in Victor’s bed fully clothed, not when his heart still stutters at the sight of that smile, not when he’s having bad days and Victor’s hand closes around his --- maybe it doesn’t matter.

When he moved away from home that first time, he called home too many times to count, lost and homesick. His mother told him he had to find something to make Gothenburg feel like home and he hadn’t really understood what she meant.

Maybe now he does.

—

There are rumors of Victor signing his entry level contract with the Sabres with the season he just had and Ras feels something still in his chest --- something like hope inching ever higher as Buffalo continues to drop to the rock bottom of the standings.

( There are also rumors of Lawrence Pilut signing an entry level contract with the Sabres, too. Ras sees the way Victor’s eyes can linger and it turns something inside him, even if he doesn’t have the right.

He chirps him for it instead. )

The ink hasn’t even dried on the paper when Victor tells him it’s official. By then, despite whatever vague answers he’s given the media, Ras has already memorized the standings and wasted too much time wishing.

—

The night before they part ways --Victor ten hours north to Örnsköldvik, Ras two hours east to his first home-- he panics.

He’s been thinking about things, about the draft, about Buffalo having the greatest odds but nothing ever being a guarantee. He thinks about leaving home and doesn’t know if he can leave another so soon. It didn’t dawn on him that he’d miss that, how fast things move in a draft year, time endlessly slipping through his fingers before he can grasp it.

“Ras?”

It’s Victor. Of course it’s Victor, oozing a sense of calm that eases Ras’s nerves with just close proximity. 

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re  _ not _ .”

“I’m  _ fine _ , _ ”  _ Ras whispers and flinches away even as every fiber of his being begs to reach out to him.

For all the calmness he projects to the media, the people around him, he still needs something to ground him. At home that’s easy, his parents, his brother and sister, and  _ here _ it’s easy now too, Victor and the way he makes him feel. He doesn’t want to lose that, doesn’t want to have to start again in a new country, with a new team, new everything.

(Except the hockey --- at least the hockey will be a constant, though when it comes to technicalities even that will not be the  _ same _ ).

His gaze drops, however, briefly to Victor’s lips and he wonders if he’d calm down if Victor kissed him. It’s a stupid thought, and it’s with almost practiced ease he shoves it along with every single other of its kind into that hidden corner. 

“Hey----- wherever you end up,” says Victor, hands taking Ras’ just as gently as his voice, “You know where to find me.”

Ras knows what he means, of guidance and dreaming. Somewhere inside him he still  _ wants  _ but that’s overshadowed now by the reality of what Victor is to him: a friend, a confidant, a piece of home he’d hate to lose. Being on the same side of the ocean is a start. At least that much is a given. It’s enough; he can make it enough.

He has to, whatever the future brings.

“Yeah,” whispers Ras, fingers ghosting over Victor’s knuckles ---  _ wishing _ . Victor has always given him hope, and now he dares to hope for what he wants. “I do.”

—

In the end, for all the hoping, wishing, and wanting, his fate lies in six ping pong balls and the destiny woven into the universe. The lottery is splayed out stupid late, sandwiched between the periods of a West coast hockey game, so late Ras probably could have gotten a full night’s sleep before it even started. He can’t sleep, though, not with the thoughts clamoring in his head and nerves too shot to relax. Instead he watches some East coast game and then the Sharks game with his heart in his throat.

Buffalo is in the top fifteen, top ten, top three…

He closes his eyes and mutes the TV; breathes in, out,  _ hopes _ . 

He opens them.

Buffalo wins the draft lottery.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you've been around, you know that Dahlofsson is like the only thing I've been talking about since I posted the Pilufsson fic back in July. I'm so glad you gave these two a chance and are ready for a whole lot more of fun :)
> 
> A couple other notes:
> 
> \- Yes, this is somewhat a prequel to bloom if you want it to be. Personally, I’m not sure where I stand on Mittslin or if that’s the endgame. I’m finding out along with you.  
\- There is an actual sequel to this in the works aka my HBB fic before I dropped out...
> 
> Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed! As always, please drop a comment or kudo if you enjoyed and you can find me over [here](http://eichhart.tumblr.com)!


End file.
